Man of the Day (or possibly, the Year)

The man I'm writing about is Michael Cooke. We spent over a year on a fecking silly experiment that we designed really well (inspired by some US wanker pseudo-scientists) to show perceptual multimodal effects. Most of us (faculty) had a look at the resulting data and said "Hey this looks promising". None of us took the time to really work through the data and do the statistics propely.
Mike did.
Thanks! You've probably saved the project. We have statistical significance left, right and centre and we can probably write at least two good papers based on this.
Michael, you earned your place. Keep going. Please keep us on the straight and narrow. Please tell me to bugger off if I'm too bad.

Friday send-off

Friday afternoon we celebrated Krispin’s successful departure from UL. We wish him all the best, and that he will either come back or send us a few bob when he makes his first million. It’s been great to work with him for the last three years! Time flies when you have fun. So, this Friday, we finally managed to get him a pint of the Black Stuff, as shown below…

And we all know the result of having a nice pint…

Cheers!

Congrats, Krispin!

01:47 this morning, Krispin's M.Sc. thesis passed, with full marks, the examination. His thesis work is exemplary.

Cyber-move...

After several days now of no UL email, at least not to/from the outside, I suggest we move our email to the idc.ul.ie domain (which will remain in the DMZ). By doing so, we can facilitate users with Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, Palm or whatever, instead of ITD's (the Incompetent/Incontinent/Impossible Technology Division) further slip into the Microsoft abyss. We can the request UL to forward our normal ul.ie emails to our own domain...
I also suggest we start preparing some http tunnelling, to allow us to work anywhere.
Suggestions?

What the hell is that?

It seems that many of the IDC bloggers have gone quiet. Perhaps it's just August. Perhaps it's because we're all under pressure. I don't know. One thing I do know: if you're stuck writing what you are supposed to be writing, just write anything - like this. It might help.

I'm launching a kind of competition here. What's the image above? The winner gets to buy me a pint (and I might reciprocate!)...

Lisa and her Leprechaun

The picture below is Lisa with her new ceramic friend - the Leprechaun. Her friends in IDC contacted a serious Kerry matchmaker to find this little creature for her.